Evidence of meeting #4 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was complaints.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Earlier, Ms. Legault, you mentioned you had initiated some complaints yourself. I don't know if you can answer this, but why would you be initiating complaints yourself?
12:20 p.m.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada case was a case I initiated when I was acting for the commissioner two years ago. That would be a case where we could decide to initiate a complaint because court documents had been disclosed publicly in the media that e-mails may have been deleted after an access to information request was made, so at the time I decided to initiate a complaint. We see the result of that complaint as of last week.
Sometimes we ask institutions to give us commitment dates when they are in deemed refusal to provide information. Sometimes they give us a commitment date, and if it's a lengthy commitment date, we close the file. But if they don't provide the information at that time, we may initiate a complaint under those circumstances, or any other time we come across something we think is problematic under the act. The reasons why you may initiate a complaint are very broad.
I must put a caveat. I do this judiciously, because I have 2,100 cases on my roster, so I can't go around initiating complaints willy-nilly either.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Yes, another 2,100 on top of another 2,100 wouldn't be a good thing, I suppose.
In your presentation, you said as part of your three-year plan you're undertaking a systematic investigation into delays and time exemptions. You're expanding that due to recent events to examine whether interference in the processing of access requests is the cause of delay or unduly restricts disclosure under the act. We too have some concerns in this area, whether there is a systematic attempt to block the release of information or obstruct it. How long do you expect your process is going to take to be completed?
12:25 p.m.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
The honest answer is that I don't know at this point.
The team that's going to do this investigation is now just completing the report cards process. Part of the information we have gathered in the report cards process is relevant to the investigative plan for the systemic investigation. Also, we have three specific cases of allegations of interference at this point, and these will also be instructive. As I said, the last time we conducted an investigation of this type, it took three years. I'm hoping to halve that, so 18 months is my goal.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
I think our concern is with that type of timeframe. As was in the media last week, I believe, or maybe even Monday, there's an allegation that the director of communications for the office of the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development may have been involved in obstruction or delay. Our concern is with the length of time of your investigation. If it's going to take 18 months, we want to ensure that this doesn't become a pattern, because information from a minister's office, whether it's critical of government or not, is critical to our ability to do our jobs as MPs.
I lay that on the table as a concern we have over the length of time it might take you to get that far. We may have to take other approaches, Mr. Chair.
You mentioned that section 67.1 of the act came in following the Krever inquiry. Has there been only one case under section 67.1 of the Access to Information Act?
12:25 p.m.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
This is the first one.
12:25 p.m.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
It's the first one. It's the first time that we have referred a matter in relation to an offence under that provision. Now, will there be an investigation? Will there be a prosecution? That's outside my control at this point, but our office has never referred a case before.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple of very quick questions.
In your three-year plan, you talk about a parallel undertaking to do the report card assessment of the institutions that became subject to the act since 2007, and I think you said earlier that there were 70 or 71 institutions. Are you planning on being able to do all of those within that timeframe?
12:25 p.m.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
We're not going to do the 69 institutions, because most of them have very few requests. We're probably going to manage it around ten institutions.
That's going to include our office, by the way. We're basically going to subject our office to the same report card process. Some agents of Parliament are going to be included, as well as institutions such as the CBC, Canada Post, and VIA Rail. The largest crown corporations are probably going to be included.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Thank you.
I think you said there were around 34,000 requests, and 2,000 of those became complaints. Do you know if that is a reasonable ratio when you look at other countries that are doing access to information?
12:30 p.m.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
That is a very good question--
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
12:30 p.m.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
That is a good question. I really don't know. I really don't know whether that's a ratio you see in other jurisdictions. That's a very good question.
What we do know is that it has been fairly consistent year over year. About 5% to 6% of requests result in complaints. There was a spike, as I said, in 2007-08 and 2008-09, but that's mostly related to the complaints against the CBC. If you discount those, it's fairly even over the years in Canada. There hasn't been a particular spike under any particular government, as far as I can tell, year over year.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Thank you.
I want to quickly echo the comments the members made. I think the feeling is that we're comfortable that you have taken every possible step to ensure the continuity of progress within the commission, and that's very much appreciated and should be noted.
Let me be a little pepper on you, though, regarding new hires. How many of those came from other government departments?
12:30 p.m.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
In the new hirees? Most of them came from other government departments. Even the consultants are former government employees who worked in access to information.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Okay. That's unfortunate, because all we've really done is shuffled the problem off to other departments. This is a pattern that has been going on for far too long. We need to open up a little bit more. I don't know how to deal with it, but I really wish that commissions and departments were talking to each other, because it is just passing on a problem to somebody else and it's just working its way through the system.
I am very glad that you talked about not just what the numbers are but the commitment to look at the root causes of some of the problems, and the consultations have come up in a number of other areas. I am a former chair of the scrutiny of regulations committee and still serve on that committee, and I do know that a simple response to a letter that you send could take anywhere from 30 days to 30 months. It's astounding how some of the information just does not move between departments very easily, so that every time there is a transfer or a consultation, you open yourself up to having artificially large numbers.
I wanted to ask, in your experience are you seeing transfers to any specific department as being a pattern of some sort? Is there incidence of a bottleneck?
12:30 p.m.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I think you will clearly see that from the report cards in a couple of weeks.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
12:30 p.m.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I will add, though, that there are mandatory consultations under policy by Treasury Board Secretariat for specific sections of the Access to Information Act. So when we look at those mandatory consultations on their policy and the departments that have these information holdings, it's clear where the bottlenecks are. Some of these consulted institutions actually do very well and respond very quickly, and some, as you will see, do very badly.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
I have one last request that maybe we can deal with at some other time, but with regard to your investigations I think it would be useful to find out from you whether or not you have any points for consideration or recommendations on how the rules guiding you in terms of the conduct and discussion outside of your umbrella about matters related to investigations might want to be considered for improvement or to provide a greater latitude for you. It would appear that a commissioner or an officer of Parliament will become aware of some information that is not directly relevant to their mandate but they have no jurisdiction to have any discussions outside of their own umbrella. That seems to me to be a potential opportunity for improvement to the system of investigations.
